Diary

As a progressive party that has always welcomed constructive criticism from the rank and file, New Labour naturally makes every effort to ensure the placards, banners and other paraphernalia of misguided protest have no place at its annual conference. To this end, delegates willingly undergo countless friskings, bag searches and pocket inspections - and have even, we hear, cheerfully changed the odd off-message T-shirt or 10. Odd, then, that the multitude of anguished messages held aloft by desperate single-issue campaigners during Mr Tony's last hurrah on Tuesday - Blair Walks on Water; Come Back, All is Forgiven; One More Term; The Greatest PM Ever; etc - seem to have made it past the stewards without a hitch. Though not, we're sure, because they'd been up half the night writing them.

Hats off, meanwhile, to that small but dedicated band who decided it was on balance better to watch our noble leader's triumph outside the hall on the telly rather than feel in any way awkward about standing for the ovation inside. Honourable members Kelvin Hopkins and Jeremy Corbyn, and former MPs Alice Mahon and John Cryer (who politely refused a reserved T&G seat), we salute you.

David Cameron, June 2005, addressing the Policy Exchange thinktank: "I am absolutely clear that the Conservative party has always stood for, and will always stand for, aspiration and compassion in equal measure." Mr Tony, Tuesday, addressing conference: "The USP of New Labour is aspiration and compassion reconciled." Surely we cannot be alone in finding the words "the", "difference" and "spot" springing, unbidden, to mind?

Momentarily - if you can ever forgive us - neglecting Manchester, we nominate for our coveted Local Newspaper Headline of the Week Award the estimable Boring News, respected and independent organ of the small town of Boring, 16 miles south-east of Portland, Oregon. "Keep Boring Boring", it urges, winningly, reporting on a vital campaign against threatened new urban-planning laws that many locals believe will destroy the area's character. "New or old residents, we came to be in a rural area," writes local Mike Mitchell in the editorial. "A tremendous loss will be experienced if higher-density zonings prevail. If done in unity and numbers, this community can remain the Boring we all know and love." And deserves, we feel, the support of each and every one of us.

Spotted at conference, on the League Against Cruel Sports stand, Pauline Prescott, bouffant as ever, posing for photographers with her hand firmly on the thigh of a super-sized stuffed fox, itself mounted proudly on a vintage motorbike. What was that about, then?

Spotted also, the fearless first former Tory leader ever to attend a Labour party conference, being asked by a concerned policemen quite what he was doing there and whether he didn't perhaps need protection. "No, but I might need some when I face the Conservatives," quipped, quick as a flash, the ever-dashing Iain Duncan Smith.

Barbara Roche, we reckon, wants in from the cold. MP for Hornsey and Wood Green until 2005, when she regrettably mislaid a 10,500 majority, the former minister for "social exclusion" has, we hear, developed something of a fondness for Teesside (in general), and the Stockton North constituency (in particular), since becoming a visiting fellow at the university there. Doubtless local Labour MP Frank Cook (age 70, majority 12,437) is delighted.

To Queensland, finally, where our faith in humanity is almost restored on hearing, courtesy of the Australian Press Association, that Will Kemp and his fiancee Kahila, devastated fans of the late croc hunter Steve Irwin, have decided to feed their baby's placenta to the family's three pet predatory giant lizards. Says proud Will of two-week-old Tai (named after the taipan, a venomous snake), and his 18-month-old brother Ramsay (for Aspidites ramsayi, the deadly Woma python), "I just want both my boys to get into reptiles." Respect.